1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for providing feedback to a publisher.
2. Description of the Related Art
Publish and Subscribe (pub/sub) is an effective way of disseminating information to multiple users. Pub/Sub applications can help to simplify the task of getting business messages and transactions to a wide, dynamically changing, and potentially large audience in a timely manner.
In a pub/sub system, publishers are typically not concerned with where their messages are going, and subscribers are not interested in where the messages they receive have come from. The publishers and subscribers are loosely coupled, in that no state is shared between them. Instead, a “broker” typically assures the integrity of the message source and manages the distribution of a message according to subscriptions registered at the broker.
Message topic strings typically provide the key to the delivery of messages between publishers and subscribers. With reference to a pub/sub system 100 as shown in FIG. 1, instead of including a specific destination address in each message, a publisher 105 assigns a topic string to a message. A broker 110 comprises a matching engine 115 for matching a topic string of a published message with a list of subscribers 120 and 125 who have subscribed to receive messages that are published to that topic string. In response to a match, the broker 110 sends the published message to the subscribers 120 and 125.